The Late Jack Gibson, Pioneer of Hypnosis in Hospitals in Ireland

by Angela Gorman, Copyright 2005-2010

A Tribute to Dr. Jack Gibson

I admired Dr. Jack Gibson from a distance for many years. He died recently at the age of 95 and left a great legacy of inspiration and ground breaking work behind him.

A former county surgeon at Naas General Hospital (Ireland), he was an advocate of the use of hypnosis in surgery. He is credited with treating over 4,000 patients without anaesthetics.

He first experienced the benefits of the subconscious mind, as a young graduate, when a Bedouin tribesman refused an anaesthetic but allowed him to remove a growth on his leg.

He observed that this man experienced no pain as a result of the procedure and began to understand that the tribesman had been using self-hypnosis to achieve this,

The first time Jack used hypnosis was to help a patient in South Africa to give up smoking. Encouraged by the power of hypnosis he trained with a psychiatrist and started to use hypnosis for treating asthma and for facilitating painless childbirth. At Naas General Hospital he performed thousands of procedures, amputating limbs, setting bones and treating first – degree burns without resort to conventional anaesthetics.

Following his retirement as a surgeon, he set up a practice where he employed hypnosis at his home, St. David’s, an 11th century Norman castle in Naas.

Self Hypnosis helped Jack to successfully treat both a cancerous growth on his forehead and troublesome varicose veins. Despite a severe stroke in 1989, the replacement of both rheumatoid knees and an operation for a wrist disorder he continued working seven days a week, until a few days before he died.

He published three books on his life and work and was in the process of writing three more.

A remarkable man, Jack lived with a light heart and a big smile. He touched many people with his simple genius. He will truly be missed.